Progress

We were just about to get to the end of the play last time I
spoke to you. However, the actor playing Escalus got injured and
he's been unable to come back into rehearsals. His replacement
started at the beginning of the week, so we went back over some
scenes to help that actor settle in. I don’t think Angelo's
relationship with Escalus is particularly close – actually he gives
Escalus quite a hard time in the scene with Elbow and the Provost
[II.1]. I suppose they're thrown together when the Duke leaves -
under very strange circumstances.

Going back over those early scenes slightly delayed our getting
to the end of the play, but yesterday we got to the end for the
first time. Measure for Measure reminds me of Twelfth
Night in that it has a big act five with almost everyone on
stage – so many things are revealed and sorted out, the guilty
people are punished and the good people are rewarded. Angelo is
married to Marianna and sentenced to death, then the sentence is
revoked and Claudio appears, alive. It would be too much for Angelo
and Marianna to become close straightaway at the end of the play.
Hilary [Tones, Marianna] and I discussed it, and we think we’ll
keep some distance there. Angelo and Marianna get to dance together
in the jig at the end of the play (like the Duke and Isabella), so
hopefully that will give a sense of their togetherness without
finally resolving what happens next.

Simply getting everyone onstage at the right moment in Act five
is rather confusing, but at we’ve made a start on it now. At least
you really can spread people around on the Globe stage. I feel good
about getting to the end of the play; I’ve got a better sense of
the shape of the story and the character's journey. I haven’t
learnt all my lines for Act five (not many people have), so that
will be the next thing to do. Getting ‘off book’ gives you more
freedom to experiment which is exciting.

We’re in week four of rehearsal. We still have another two
weeks. We’ve worked on all the other scenes at least two or three
times, we still have two weeks of rehearsal and a technical week as
well… so yes, I'm not worried about where we're at!

Familiarity

The Company knows one another now, and a comfortable familiarity
certainly helps when you have to play big intense scenes. People
don’t necessarily know each other at the start of rehearsals. Soon
you’re playing big intense scenes where your character is in love
with someone, or you’re married, or you hate a person and you want
to kill them; that's quite difficult when the person for whom
you’re meant to have such strong feelings is a total stranger! To
get to the point where I play a scene truthfully or convincingly, I
have to spend some time with the person. The way you love or hate
somebody is completely tied up with the fact that it is that
particular person – that face, that body, that voice. I don’t think
there is any substitute for time passing, which is why it's nice to
have six weeks of rehearsal at the Globe.

Opening last

Measure for Measure is the final show of the season and
that's quite strange for me, as I’ve always been in the first show
to open. There are two plays up and running so when we have our
week of technical rehearsals, we’ll have to stop at about half past
five because there will be a performance that evening. It's nice to
know that when I need a little break and I want to think about
something other than the part, I can just go and watch one of the
other shows. Watching is still helpful because the actors on that
stage, they are doing Shakespeare, they’re wearing similar clothes
to the ones we’ll be wearing... hopefully your brain is doing a
little bit of homework as well.

Clothing

I’ve got a fair idea of what I am going to look like now I’ve
had several fittings. I’m predominantly in black – black doublet
and hose – but I have cream-coloured sleeves. That feels right for
Angelo's austere, sombre side. Some of the cast have been wearing
shoes or corsets in rehearsal, to get used to the feel of these
things. If you haven’t worn original practices clothing before, it
can seem awkward at first. I haven’t worn my shoes in rehearsal
this time, but I hope that will be ok because I have worn the same
kind of shoes in previous seasons. As all the clothing at the Globe
is recycled from season to season, I might have even worn bits of
Angelo's costume before, though I wouldn’t recognise them: they’re
cleverly disguised to look different. Mark [Rylance, Duke
Vincentio] had the idea that the Duke should leave his Court in the
middle of the night; he does an unexpected thing at an unexpected
hour. If we play it that way, Escalus and I will come on in the
Elizabethan equivalent of our night clothes so there’ll be some
costume changes too.

Gradual development

For me, a character comes gradually – I don’t tend to make big
discoveries. It's more to do with saying the words and becoming
familiar with the scene. I think that's probably healthier than
reading a play and starting rehearsals, then getting hit by a major
realisation, discovering something that you hadn’t seen before. I
think that would worry me, actually. So it sounds a bit
un-dramatic, but you hope to be on the right track from early
on.

Another perspective

I went to see another production of Measure for Measure
recently, which was interesting. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t like
the way Angelo was portrayed. What I felt he was that he was the
creepiest guy in the world, and maybe the character gets played
that way quite often. As I watched, I thought hang on a minute.
Angelo is celibate. Initially that's what makes him stand out in
the world of the play – his celibacy. In Elizabethan times, it
would be enough to be known as a celibate for no other reason than
your own personal choice, for people to say things like ‘Oh, his
blood's ice.’ The play goes on and he does do something appalling,
but it seems to me that this is much more interesting if he's made
as real and normal as possible.

Of course, you have to stay within the bounds of what actually
happens in the play; you have to do what the play tells you to do
and ultimately Angelo does something appalling. However, this part
is a bit like Macbeth… it's written well enough for you to
recognise that the character is an appalling person but at the same
time there's a part of you that understands. I think great writers
remind us that we do all have a dark side. If you portray a
character as very creepy and odd, then the audience is let off the
hook. We can feel safe because the character does just seem so
weird and horrible that they’re on another planet. There's no
chance of a tiny glimmer of recognition.

The portrayal I saw was very tortured and angst-ridden. It was
possible to have sympathy but you could never think ‘I once knew
someone a bit like that’ or even ‘I might one day meet someone like
that.’

Soliloquy

Angelo has a soliloquy where he tells the audience how he is
feeling after his first meeting with Isabella and he turns round to
the audience and literally asks ‘What's this? What's this?’
[II.2.163]. He's talking about the way he's feeling; this is the
first time he's been blown away by someone, and he's experiencing
lust. I think that's the crucial moment, really. Angelo's
experience isn’t normal but there must be a way of making it
credible and real. We don’t know at that moment that he will
present her with an appalling ultimatum.

Regret and redemption

I think Angelo does regret his actions. He says he's very
repentant at the end of the play. Of course, that's when he
realises that he hasn’t gotten away with it – the Duke knows
everything – but the way the lines are written does make me think
that his repentance is genuine. I also think it is genuine because
sleeping with Isabella doesn’t help him in the way he expects (even
before he knows Marianna took Isabella's place). He thought this
was going to make him complete and it hasn’t. I think there might
even be a sense of relief and release when he confesses at the end,
and says ‘No, put me to death, because that's what I deserve.’ He's
let off by the Duke, though, and told to marry his betrothed (whom
he had sort of jilted before he ever met Isabella). I suppose his
journey involves a kind of redemption. He's very honest if nothing
else; he's very honest with the audience and very, very direct.
Even when that's uncomfortable, he tells us exactly what's going
on.

It will be interesting to see how the audiences respond to the
character, because if I had a penny for every time somebody said to
me ‘Oh, you’re playing the baddie’ I would be rich! It's a
responsibility to play someone and you can’t afford to think of it
in such shallow terms as ‘goodie’ and ‘baddie’; you’ve got to try
to make the person credibly well-rounded and human. To say ‘Oh he's
a baddie…’ seems so black and white, but I think an audience who
know the play might be inclined to approach the character that
way.

Angelo asks a lot of questions in the soliloquies. That's always
a bit scary at the Globe because there will be times when someone
in the audience actually gives the character an answer. I’ll have
to think about that because I’ll probably get some responses –
after all, what Angelo does is so extreme and he does invite
responses. For instance, after my first encounter with Isabella,
she goes off and I turn to the audience and say, ‘What's this,
what's this?’ [II.2.163] and then immediately after that, I say ‘Is
this her fault or mine?’ Now, I think there will to be times when
the audience respond there. The next line is another question: ‘The
tempter or the tempted, who sins most?’ Then there's a one word –
‘Ha?’ That has another question mark. It's almost as if he's
persevering until someone does help him with an answer. After the
questions, he answers himself and says ‘Not she, nor doth she
tempt; but it is I.’ [II.2.165] I don’t think it is right to make
up responses to what the audience say, but I think we can get away
with kind of tweaking the next lines in the script as a kind of
response. That's not cheating too much.

That moment in the soliloquy is brilliant. Angelo is a great
part and the two scenes with Isabella make it; they’re the
substance of the part. In terms of the pattern of time on stage,
Angelo is very like Orsino [Twelfth Night], who I played
at the Globe a couple of Seasons ago. The ‘good stuff,’ as it were,
is in the first half. He's off for three quarters of the second
half then comes back at the end in a big Act five: exactly the same
pattern as Orsino. It's a hard part too, but everyone thinks that
about the character they have to play.

Scenes with Isabella

Before I got to know the play I thought Angelo was alone with
Isabella in both their scenes, but there are other people on stage
when they first meet [II.2] and these people say the odd line too.
In the second scene it's an empty stage. Isabella and Angelo are
alone and that progression feels right, but it's tricky. I want the
first scene to feel as intimate as the second, but a state of
frustration in the first scene is right; Angelo may very well want
to be on his own with Isabella, but he isn’t – it's been written
that way, and the choice seems important. I don’t want to fight it.
The fact that they aren’t alone in the first scene increases the
passion in the second scene too. The whole relationship is upped a
gear because in the first scene he's in a state of shock; either by
the beginning of the second scene or in the course of the second
scene, he actually makes the decision to proposition her. To
imagine that thought was in his head in the first scene would be
jumping too far ahead. I don’t think Angelo would act differently
in Act two, scene two, if the onlookers weren’t there. He would
probably conduct himself in the same way – it would be too soon for
anything else to happen. I’d say there isn’t a rift between the
public and private man in him until he meets Isabella – then he
experiences a massive turn-around. He strikes me as someone who
spends a lot of time on his own… that's interesting because I think
that's the way Mark [Rylance, Vincentio] feels about the Duke too.
In some ways the Duke and Angelo are balanced against each
other.

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the
part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply
his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal
process progresses.

Breathing space

I don’t really have anything to say this week because I haven’t
been in rehearsals for about five days! I’ve been doing the jigging
rehearsals and I’ve been doing the group sessions, but we’ve
basically hit this chunk of the play that I’m not in – Act III and
most of Act IV. I’m in this afternoon which is good: it's nice for
a couple of days because you get a breather and sit back from it
for a bit, but after that it does start to feel strange. You just
feel a bit detached. We’re coming towards the end now for the first
time, working through it. I’m not exactly sure where we’re going to
stop for the interval, but roughly looking at it on paper I’m not
in about three quarters of the second half.

Funnily enough, Angelo's part is distributed across the play in
almost exactly the same way as Orsino's in Twelfth Night:
your good stuff is in the first half, you’re off for most of the
second half, and then you are back again at the end. Last year my
characters, Bolingbroke and Edward II [Richard II and
Edward II] were on regularly all the way through, which is
actually better in that rehearsal feels slightly more unified.

Rehearsals

We’ll read through a scene then really look hard at what might
be going on in the lines. I think we have worked quite slowly – not
too slowly though. I suppose by the end of this week we will be
half way through rehearsals, and we’re just coming to the end of
the play. But then there are set backs that you can’t help; we had
an accident yesterday. Ed Peel [Escalus] snapped his Achilles’
tendon so he's out now, which is a shame. We’ll be finding out
today or tomorrow who we’re going to get to play that part. It's a
shame for Ed; he's a really nice guy. It's just one of those
things. It happened so quickly – we were leaping around in a
movement class and suddenly he just crumpled.

It was a bit unsettling for everyone. We were working in smaller
groups, and certainly for those of us who were in the room, it was
quite weird. I have a few scenes with him, so it will be
interesting to see what happens next. The scenes aren’t huge but
we’ll obviously have to go back and do them again. When the Duke
puts me in charge, Escalus is like my second in command.

I’m expecting the play to change a lot when we go back and look
at the earlier scenes. By then, it will be three weeks really since
we worked on them, which feels like a long time. I’m not so bad
with the two Isabella scenes [II.2 and II.4] because we did those
more recently – they take a little while before they happen, about
a third of the way in. So they don’t seem so long ago, but we’re
going back to the first one of them this afternoon then we’ll go
back to the second one again tomorrow afternoon. I’m glad about
that. I feel like I’ve kind of put the parts of the play together
again, which is good.

Lines

While I haven’t been in rehearsal, I have been learning my
lines. I don’t know them all yet, but I will do by the beginning of
next week and that's fine. I don’t have a massive amount of text so
if I learn them for the beginning of next week, that still gives me
half the rehearsal period off book, which is what I usually look
for. This morning I had a session with Giles [Block, Master of the
Words]. We looked through a couple of my speeches. I haven’t made
any major discoveries with Giles so far, but he's always really
helpful. He points out things and Shakespeare is so dense that you
do miss things; to have someone who just listens to you read and
gently suggests thoughts and ideas is great. He just asks ‘Have you
thought about this?’ and ‘Have you thought about that?’ They’re not
huge things, but everyone does find it very helpful to have a
one-to-one session with Giles. It's a little bit of a boost for the
next try at rehearsal. You just feel more clued up with the
words.

Scenes with Isabella

I’m looking forward to this afternoon and tomorrow because when
Sophie [Thompson, Isabella] and I did them previously we both had
our noses in the book. I think Sophie knows the lines now as well,
so hopefully it should be more interesting this afternoon. We can
think about things other than ‘What comes next?’ They’re great
scenes, and one of the problems is I think they both actually
should go quite briskly. It's a bit odd – in a way you think ‘It's
over before you know it.’ You are just beginning to enjoy yourself
and then you go ‘They are actually quite quick’. Sophie has a lot
more to do than me because she has several scenes with the Duke, as
well, which I don’t have. But I know she likes these scenes as much
as I do. We bumped into each other on the street the other day and
just sat down under the Millennium Bridge and did the lines from
the first scene [II.2]. That was fun to just sit in the sunshine
and do it.

Angelo's character

He does something absolutely appalling, but I always think that
these plays are so good and these parts are so good that you should
never feel that the characters are so evil as to be completely
alien from us. I think we should always be left thinking that you
can smell a little bit of yourself in one of these parts however
awfully they behave. I just think that they are so well written
that they are that human. Angelo does face Isabella with an
appalling dilemma, but I don’t think he should be such a monster
that you can’t relate to him at all, and so you feel safe.

In a way, Angelo is the ‘baddie’ in the piece - although I
personally think the Duke's quite a dodgy character as well - but I
find the fact that Shakespeare gives Angelo soliloquies really
interesting. I don’t know why he has them unless we are supposed
to… not necessarily feel sympathy for him, but at least go with him
on this, on what's happening to him. If he's so appalling that we
hate his guts, why would we want to listen to him when he is
talking to us? I think you just have to go with that and discover
and play him, and try and find out why that is. It's easy enough to
watch a complete monster if they are acting with other people and
you’re watching them do something at one remove, but when they are
actually speaking to you and asking you questions, I think that you
have to find them interesting.

Motivation

I think Angelo discovers lust for the first time. This happens
when he's been put in this situation where he also has power and
the combination of the two things tip him over an edge. He decides
to follow through with that ultimatum because he can. I think the
reason is simply that, for whatever reasons, no one has ever had
this affect on him before. Isabella has a devastating effect on him
when he meets her and it happens to coincide with a time when he
holds an all powerful position. That combination spoils him.

Angelo could have any woman he wanted but he wants Isabella, and
she's going to say ‘no’ so the ultimatum is the only way; that's
what he tells us and I don’t see why there's any reason to
disbelieve him. He has led this incredibly virtuous, celibate, holy
life so far and that obviously must be part of her appeal. She is
just about to take her vows to become a nun, so there is a big
connection there. In an odd roundabout way, that has got to be huge
part of the attraction for him.

Mariana and Isabella

My feeling at the moment is that Angelo's relationship with
Mariana was probably the only one, actually. He seems inexperienced
because of the way he deals with it, and there is no particular
reason to believe that there has been any consummation of the
relationship with Mariana. I find it helpful to think that there
hasn’t been. He has the meeting with Mariana and who he thinks is
Isabella, but I think there's something interesting in the fact
that it is his loss of virginity as well. I mean, yes, he's
engineered it and he's in the driving seat, but there's something
human and interesting about it almost certainly being his first
sexual encounter as well. Although he's being rotten about it,
obviously it's a big deal for him, too. It's not something obvious
that you can play; there's nothing you can do to kind of get that
across, but I just think it's a useful thought to have whilst
you’re playing the scenes. We haven’t touched the final scene at
all, so I have no idea how he responds to the news of the marriage.
He certainly is paired up with Mariana at the Duke's order, but I
don’t know how he feels about that. He's as silent as Isabella at
the end, really, which is perhaps another nice parallel between
those characters.

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the
part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply
his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal
process progresses.

Back again

I can’t believe this will be my fourth season on the trot. I
find that quite amazing because it doesn’t feel like that long at
all. Actually, I suppose I’ve only done three seasons so far; I
originally came to play Macduff in Macbeth, then returned
the following season to play Orsino in Twelfth Night, as
well as a part called the Old Woman in a new play by Peter Oswald
called The Golden Ass. Last year I played Bolingbroke in
Richard II and Edward II in Edward II. This year
I’m playing Angelo in Measure for Measure. We’re only in
one play this season so it's going to feel slightly different – but
easier! The Rose Company is the last of the three to begin
rehearsals so our season will be a little shorter too. I think it
will only be five months in all because of the way things have
fallen, and that's going to be much more relaxed than last year:
that season was just enormous – about ten months in all, including
the American tour of Twelfth Night. Each of the seasons
prior to that was a full six months, so I was expecting some
differences this time round. The fact that a show [Romeo and
Juliet] opened two days after we arrived made me feel like we
really were coming in late. Much Ado About Nothing will
open in about a week and a half so the strangeness is still there.
It's very weird, as though you’re a late arrival at a party!

Preparation

I think I was offered the part relatively late. We started
rehearsals on the fourth of May and Mark contacted me towards the
end of February. Again, that differs from the process last season:
I found out about Bolingbroke and Edward II quite early on and
spent a lot of time mulling over them through the winter. This time
I made quite an instinctive decision not to do lots of work
beforehand. There's just the one play, and the part is lovely –
it's quite big but not massive like Edward II, and that allows you
to be a wee bit more relaxed. I thought ‘No, I’ll just work really
hard during the rehearsal period this time.’ I read the play
through a few times before we started though. In one sense, there
isn’t the same scope for research prior to rehearsal this time.
Measure for Measure isn’t a history play like Edward
II or Richard II, and a lot of my preparation last
year concentrated on Bolingbroke and Edward's ‘real’ characters. I
enjoyed reading the background history and taking trips to the
places where the characters had been born or had visited during
their lives. I’ll just have to go on little trips for the sake of
it this time [laughs].

Reaction

I jumped at the part when it was offered – if I’m honest, I
wasn’t sure how I would react if I happened to be offered something
this season. Four consecutive years is a long time at one theatre
when the productions take half a year, and I had wondered about
taking a break from the Globe. However when the phone rang and I
was offered Angelo, I said ‘Okay, that's lovely. Thanks very much,
I’ll have a think’, but as soon as I put the phone down I thought
‘Yes, this feels right.’ I didn’t know I was going to feel like
that. I felt like I had jumped at the chance, so I accepted. There
will be different challenges this year. We have a new director and
a mixed company. There are also five or six people in the cast whom
I don’t know, which is quite nice and helps to keep things fresh.
Apart from Edward II, which was directed by Tim Walker,
I’ve always worked with Tim Carroll. Each director has an
individual style and works at a different pace. You just have to
find a working rhythm that feels comfortable for both of you. John
Dove [Master of Play] is taking his time and going into the scenes
in very thorough detail at the moment. We’re not actually that far
through the play at this point [second week of rehearsals] whereas
another director might have gone through the whole thing in a less
meticulous way by now. Everyone's approach is different and that's
partly why working on these plays is still interesting.

Rehearsal

Rehearsals don’t actually start on day one at the Globe because
we have a big ‘Meet and Greet’ session. It gives the Company a
chance to bond and introduces everyone to the building and each
other. Since day two, rehearsals so far have mostly involved
working through the play in quite a straightforward way… when you
reach a new scene for the first time, you read it round the table
and then you go back through it and thrash it out, making sure that
everyone knows what everything means. We didn’t do a read-through
as such, which seems to be happening more frequently these days. I
don’t think it's a particularly great loss; they’re a bit
nerve-racking really. We just went straight into the opening
scene.

The process is quite static to begin with, because of the
detailed text work. After we’re clear about the meaning, we
tentatively put the scenes on their feet. As I said, we’re taking
time. Tim Carroll would probably go plunging in, just get to the
end and come back to close textual analysis later on. John's just
doing something different. It will be interesting to see what
happens. I have to say, I think it's a hard play. I had to read it
about four times before I had a clue about what was going on… okay,
I’m exaggerating a bit – but it definitely took me four readings
before I knew what was going on at certain points. Hopefully what
will happen is that the lines will become much clearer when you see
them acted out rather than reading them on a page.

I feel that Measure for Measure suffers because the
first couple of pages are incredibly difficult, and picking up the
thread of the story is tricky. The play jumps right into the action
and you don’t have much time to get your bearings. The first
speeches [I.I.] are quite complex. Basically, the Duke is taking
himself off for a while and passing over authority to me but the
way we speak isn’t easy to understand and it's always problematic
if people are put off by difficulties right at the beginning. We’ll
have to make very sure the story is as clear as it can be so that
no one recoils ‘Oh crikey, what are they talking about?’ I think
after the first couple of pages it will get easier. Angelo doesn’t
say very much in that first scene; it's mostly up to Mark [Rylance,
Vincentio] to make the situation clear to the audience. I suppose
it's enough that two high status people are saying farewell to each
other and that power is being handed over. If people grasp those
fundamentals, then that's great.

Angelo

It takes some time for us to find out what sort of person Angelo
is. He gets talked about a lot and it's always tempting to play
what people say about you, but I think you have a responsibility to
sit down and take a bit of time looking closely at the lines. We
don’t necessarily go about displaying the all characteristics that
other people identify as being part of our persona, and there are
other characteristics that people will miss. If someone else wrote
a three page description of me, I wouldn’t necessarily recognise
myself at all, or maybe I would only recognise bits of myself. It's
like that with Angelo: we don’t find everything out at once. He
goes on a journey and he does change, although once the story gets
going, I suppose we do move very quickly. The play spans three or
maybe four days – as often happens in Shakespeare, events take
place in a condensed time-frame so things seem to happen at pretty
break-neck speed.

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the
part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply
his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal
process progresses.